A Change of Heart
by AltruisticThoughts
Summary: Remi, a lifelong criminal, turns on his former employers to rectify the mistakes of his troubled past. A piece vaguely inspired in some ways by Westerns.


The streets of Mos Eisley, the armpit of the galaxy

The streets of Mos Eisley, the armpit of the galaxy. Rabble to rubble, stone walls to dust pathways, the ashes of dignity drifted away into the dark alleys to flee the abominable sins of the city. Day in, day out, Mos Eisley was the collective scum of the galaxy, amplified a dozen fold by the spice in the streets, twisted further by the slaves dancing in the cantinas, and energetically punctuated by the common-place blaster fire.

Remi Sutton passed through the growing drunken crowd outside the Firethroat Cantina, where the gaudy sounds of reedy tavern music were muffled by thick adobe walls and inebriated yelling.

The man in the tattered black jacket held his head low, his brown boonie hat darkening his face; only a dark brown, scraggly goatee was visible on his face, and imperfect teeth held in a permanently menacing scowl. Two holsters lay on either side of his hips, a blaster on the right, and a behemoth-looking weapon of a different make altogether on his left.

His appearance marked whispers and murmuring in the crowd around sober enough to comprehend the situation, and he flashes a devious glance at a nearby bouncer with his menacing gray eyes. The beefy guard stepped aside for the average-sized human, stories of brutality and senseless bloodshed parting the seas of otherwise intimidating figures in the crowd.

Inside the Cantina, the drinkers howled and the musicians screeched, and punches swung from time to time, the outer line of hulking bouncers tossing out trouble-makers, or dragging them to the back room. Taking a seat at the bar, he tapped the shoulder of a man nearby, his head in the counter.

The balding red-head looked up at him, a scar on one eye, and a burn across his neck; he wore a blaster on his right hip, and a bandoleer over his shoulder. He squinted at the newcomer, then sighed.

"Remi," he practically growled.

"Kian, old buddy!" Remi barked back in a voice less than jovial, grabbing the shotglass from his old associate and downing it; coughing and clearing his throat, he slid the glass back, the red-head's eyes narrowing.

"Don't think we didn't hear about your last shipment, 'buddy.' Juu-ran wasn't happy to hear how his spice went missing, and you'd better have a good explanation."

"He told you already, then?" Remi asked, smiling thinly, the scar on his lips stretching with his ragged face.

"As a matter of fact, he told me if you did come, not to let you leave; I've only not thrown you in the back out of respect, but you're not walking out of here 'till he's had a chat." Kian touched his blaster, before sliding a shotglass back, and downing it himself.

"Good. I planned to have a chat with him myself; he's here?" Remi asked, rubbing his grimy forehead with an equally grimy hand, finely-ground sand falling from his sleeves.

"He's here," Kian muttered, nodding off to his left, before he nodded at the bartender, who refilled his glass. "Don't do anything stupid, Remi. I'm watching you."

"Stupid? Come on, Kian, you know me better than that..." Remi said, staggering to his feet, and wiping his mouth with his right hand.

"What I'm doing is perfectly logical," he whispered to himself out of earshot, crossing to where his associate had indicated.

A single table stood out in Remi's finely-tuned eyes, where a small group sat down with a rowdy card-game. The portly male Twi'lek stuck out like a sore thumb as he dragged back his takings over his Pazaak cards, the other players cursing and slapping their own down on the heavy metal table.

Pushing through a pair of guards and causing a bit of ruckus, Remi took a seat, a Rodian beside him scooting back, and a Gamorrean on the opposite side of the card table giving him an evil look. Juu-ran merely smiled, and laughed, his many chins jiggling with the motion; the others joined in.

"Southpaw!" the Twi'lek exclaimed, throwing his arms up, his extravagant clothes dangling off his fleshy red body. "Just the man I wanted to see; you have come to return that missing spice, I just know it. All ten tons; have you carried it in your pockets?"

Remi smirked, and back at the bar, Kian shuttered with what could only be explained as a bad feeling.

With a slow motion, Remi's left hand moved up to his hat, and placed it on the table; his arm rested there, as the others stared at it, Juu-ran still utterly unamused. The hand was solid metal, two massive semi-opposable fingers, and a nubby thumb-like structure. Remi's robotic arm had gotten him a clever nickname for it's ability to deliver a nasty left hook, nasty enough to dent steel. 'Southpaw' was an apt title, and it stuck.

"Actually, the sad part is, I won't be returning it anytime soon; you see, those crates of spice you were gonna sell to idiot kids down here, Juu-ranny old pal? They're floating off somewhere in the maw about now, headed for a good-sized black hole." The Twi'lek was trembling with fury, as his guards started to move for their guns on either side of the table. "But, I welcome you to try and fetch it."

"Kill this spineless worm!" Juu-ran barked; his goons' guns moved on cue.

Grasping the Rodian's blaster with his robotic hand, Remi jerked it to face the Gamorrean on the other side; as soon as the blast struck the pig-like guard between the eyes, his mechanical fist clenched to the sound of grinding metal. The barrel of the blaster twisted shut, and the Rodian got a single gasp out before Remi drew his blaster, and shot him twice in the chest, igniting his jacket.

The thug fell onto his cards, smoldering with an unpleasant aroma at the table; blowing smoke from his blaster, and watching a few guards start to hesitantly approach, Remi sighed, putting his hat back on. Juu-ran's face was almost fearful, but still furious, like a caged animal.

With his left hand, Remi drew out the behemoth of a weapon he kept on his south holster, and rested a metal elbow on the table to let the Twi'lek examine the gun.

"This isn't an ordinary blaster, Juu-ran. It's not a blaster at all, actually... I call it Prodigy, for good reason. See, this is weapon not unlike a slug-hurler, but it uses hot pieces of metal slag, which are mostly used to pierce through solid steel airlock doors. Normally, ammunition of that sort is used to deconstruct security measures, and no one would think of using such a high-powered weapon in their hands, let alone one; my prosthesis helps. I don't punch through locks with these molten slag slugs, I punch through ships. You see, I don't deconstruct doors with this, I deconstruct people."

The Twi'lek blinked, wetting his lips out of nervousness. A switch activated on Prodigy, a high whirring noise began to hum from the depths of the gun, as white-hot heat seared on the outside of the weapon and on Remi's robotic hand, vapor and wavy air leaving through ventilation holes along the barrel.

"I'll ask you once, then I'll kill you. Where is the next the shipment headed, and what is the activation code to your personal shuttle?" Remi was dead serious.

"The... the activation code is 04050213..."

"The shipment, Juu-ran. Don't make me out to be a liar, I'm feeling honest today." A green light came to life on Prodigy.

"The shipment?" he sighed, baring his teeth slightly. "You can go to hell-"

A deafening, high-pitched super-sonic shriek of whistling slag pierced the air with a shockwave that shattered the drinks on the table, and sent all of the guards and patrons crouching and covering their ears. In an incalculably short moment after the shriek came a roaring slam; the impact of the molten bullet was inaudible, but a great glowing hole now decorated Juu-ran's midsection. The Twi'lek fell face-first onto the table.

Kian cursed, stepping out the front door as the blaster fire began, filling up the Cantina; the innocents fled almost immediately, filling up the streets with a maelstrom of confusion and panic; the chaos was so thick, he could almost taste it.

Finally, all went silent; a smoldering guard fell out onto the dusty street, smoke rising from his blasted body. Unsnapping is holster, Kian waited.

Not one to disappoint, Remi stepped outside, his right hand already on his holster, his left held awkwardly at his side. The stinging dust whirled in the two sets of eyes, as they both grimaced, readying themselves.

"Have you lost your ever-loving mind, Remi?" Kian asked, scowling and shifting his feet; his scraggly hair blew with the whipping wind. "What happened with that shipment?"

Remi sighed, the brim of his hat curling back with the fine sand. An earnest, solemn look touched his gray eyes, as he pressed his thumb to his blaster, nodding. He gave a thin smile, before responding. "Just a change of heart, that's all."

Kian was the first to his blaster, Remi first to the trigger; the red bolt caught Kian in the stomach, and the man toppled over to the wall, his blaster falling loose with his index finger still caught in the trigger guard.

Walking over to his fallen associate as he holstered his blaster, Remi kneeled down, and relieved the fading Kian of his weapon. Patting him on the shoulder, he looked into the man's eyes one last time.

"You're so full of..." Kian began to murmur; he didn't finish his statement, rather rolling back into the sand, his eyes shut.


End file.
